John McPhee (DRAFT NO. 4: On the Writing Process) is the recipient of the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award. Named after the first president of the NBCC, the award is given annually to a person or institution, who has, over time, made significant contributions to book culture.

Carmen Maria Machado’s debut story collection, HER BODY AND OTHER PARTIES, is the recipient of the fourth annual John Leonard Prize, established to recognize outstanding first books in any genre and named in honor of founding NBCC member John Leonard.

John McPhee (DRAFT NO. 4: On the Writing Process) is the recipient of the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award. Named after the first president of the NBCC, the award is given annually to a person or institution, who has, over time, made significant contributions to book culture.

Carmen Maria Machado’s debut story collection, HER BODY AND OTHER PARTIES, is the recipient of the fourth annual John Leonard Prize, established to recognize outstanding first books in any genre and named in honor of founding NBCC member John Leonard.

Best of 2017 has come and gone, now here are the most anticipated books of 2018, according to major media:

THE HAZEL WOOD by Melissa Albert
One of the most anticipated debuts of the year — having set off an auction frenzy — THE HAZEL WOOD is a contemporary fantasy of an aggressively literary bent, centered on a 17-year-old whose mother is stolen away.

LOOK ALIVE OUT THERE by Sloane Crosley
Crosley may have put essays aside for her 2015 novel THE CLASP, but she returns with her particular brand of sardonic wit in this new collection. The tone, she told EW, is “somewhere between jaded misanthrope and easily amused child.”

A HIGHER LOYALTY: Truth, Lies and Leadership by James Comey
What will James Comey reveal in this anticipated memoir? Publisher Flatiron Books isn’t giving much away, just saying that the former FBI director promises to give a vital lesson on sound leadership, drawing on his own experiences to provide a manual that certain world leaders desperately need.

THE WIFE BETWEEN US by Greer Hendricks & Sarah PekkanenWhat it’s about: In this twisty psychological thriller, a woman dumped by her rich husband is determined to prevent his remarriage to her “replacement.”Why it’s hot: Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Partners, which brought THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN to the big screen, has picked up film rights for THE WIFE BETWEEN US.

A HIGHER LOYALTY: Truth, Lies and Leadership by James Comey
What it’s about: The former FBI director, famously fired by President Trump in May, writes a book about leadership based on his own experiences and observations in government.Why it’s hot: According to the publisher, Comey’s book will examine what “good, ethical leadership looks like and how it drives sound decisions.” The burning question: What will he say about Trump?

A HIGHER LOYALTY: Truth, Lies and Leadership by James Comey
The former FBI director — fired by President Trump and now, some say, a Zen-like master of throwing subtle shade on Twitter and Instagram — inked what was reported to be a multi-million dollar book deal in August. The book’s publisher has said the book by Comey, also a former Justice Department official and lawyer, promises to give readers “unprecedented entry into the corridors of power, and a remarkable lesson in leadership itself.” Comey, who frequently uses social media to share quotations about character, justice, leadership and power, tweeted an image of the Statue of Liberty on Dec. 5, saying he was in New York to meet with his publisher, with the note: “Hope leadership book will be useful. Reassuring to see Lady Liberty standing tall even in rough weather.”

THE GREAT ALONE by Kristin Hannah
A Vietnam POW returns from overseas and opts to relocate his family to a remote area of Alaska, far removed from the threats of war-torn societies, for a fresh start. All seems well until his PTSD kicks in during the harsh winter and turns their tiny cabin dream into a living nightmare.

LOOK ALIVE OUT THERE by Sloane Crosley
If accolades from Steve Martin and David Sedaris are any indication, Sloane Crosley’s new collection of essays delivers, with hilarious takes on fertility, mingling with swingers, and her blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo on Gossip Girl.

OLIVER LOVING by Stefan Merrill Block
Oliver Loving has been paralyzed and locked in his own mind for nearly a decade, the result of a shooting in his small Texas town. In Stefan Merrill Block’s psychologically astute novel, the damaged people that surround Oliver try to piece together their own versions of what happened that night and since then, even as doctors prepare a new treatment that might help Oliver communicate again.

THE HAZEL WOOD by Melissa Albert
Here is one of those rare young adult fantasy novels that holds a self-contained world in only a few hundred pages. So much world-building, so little space. If the novel’s heroine is a teenage girl, then her story will appeal to readers of all ages, with its intrigue and strange fairy tale magic and very grown up writing.

WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE? by Marilynne Robinson
Even in her fiction, Marilynne Robinson has a nonjudgmental, earnest way of writing about religion that could make an atheist long for spirituality. President Obama is a fan. In this essay collection theology and current events and philosophy take center stage, and it’s through the clarity of Robinson’s words that hope in times of political strife feels appropriate and urgent.

SOME HELL by Patrick Nathan
A heartbreaker of a book, Patrick Nathan’s debut novel captures the hell of adolescence under particularly dire circumstances: Colin is reeling from his father’s suicide even as he navigates coming of age as a gay teenager. As they are wont to do, sex and death dominate Colin’s thoughts as he makes his way, in agony but with an eye towards a hopeful future.

THREE DAUGHTERS OF EVE by Elif Shafak
From the most widely read female writer in Turkey, here’s a novel that sees violence and nostalgia vie for one woman’s attention on one intense night. In Istanbul, a relatively minor crime—an attempted robbery—sparks a wave of memories as the wealthy Peri ponders an old photograph of her college friends. As terrorist attacks break out, the religious and cultural differences between the three women demand her attention in the fraught present.

WHEN THEY CALL YOU A TERRORIST: A Black Lives Matter Memoir by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and Asha Bandele
Patrisse Khan-Cullors co-founded one of the most vital activist groups of recent years. Now, get to the heart of Black Lives Matter with her account of how the movement began, and marvel at the brilliance and persistence of her mission despite a continuing lack of understanding and compassion from many.

PEACH by Emma Glass
In the wake of a horrific sexual assault, titular protagonist Peach attempts to navigate a life that has tilted on its axis. As accounts of sexual assault and misconduct have arisen in recent months, our inability to reckon with such events and their aftermath has only become more clear. This short novel—under 100 pages—confronts the enormity with impressionistic grace.

FORCE OF NATURE by Jane Harper
Wow, this crime novel just gave me my newest nightmare: Five colleagues go on a hike (first mistake), and one doesn’t return. Four different stories makes it hard for Agent Aaron Falk (whom we met in Harper’s debut, THE DRY) to discern the truth. Don’t read this one during the workweek.

WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE? by Marilynne Robinson
Equipped with a heart and mind that seem more capacious than ours (though she might have a match in fan Barack Obama), Marilynne Robinson has made a career out of writing life-expanding novels and wonderings, like Pulitzer Prize–winning novel GILEAD. Soon, she’ll give us a new set of essays about faith, life, and culture. readmoreremove

LOCKING UP OUR OWN: Crime and Punishment in Black America by James Forman Jr.
A former public defender in Washington, Forman has written a masterly account of how a generation of black officials, beginning in the 1970s, wrestled with recurring crises of violence and drug use in the nation’s capital. What started out as an effort to assert the value of black lives turned into an embrace of tough-on-crime policies — with devastating consequences for the very communities those officials had promised to represent. Forman argues that dismantling the American system of mass incarceration will require a new understanding of justice, one that emphasizes accountability instead of vengeance.

PRAIRIE FIRES: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser
Fraser’s biography of the author of “Little House on the Prairie” and other beloved books about her childhood during the era of westward migration captures the details of a life — and an improbable, iconic literary career — that has been expertly veiled by fiction. Exhaustively researched and passionately written, this book refreshes and revitalizes our understanding of Western American history, giving space to the stories of Native Americans displaced from the tribal lands by white settlers like the Ingalls family as well as to the travails of homesteaders, farmers and everyone else who rushed to the West to extract its often elusive riches. Ending with a savvy analysis of the 20th-century turn toward right-wing politics taken by Wilder and her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, Fraser offers a remarkably wide-angle view of how national myths are shaped.

November brings a bounty of excellent new nonfiction to your library’s shelves!

PROMISE ME, DAD: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose by Joe Biden
The vice president pens a deeply moving memoir about the most challenging professional and personal year in which he lost his son to brain cancer. “The book is a backstage drama, honest, raw and rich in detail. People who have lost someone will genuinely take comfort from what he has to say….” — New York Times

PRAIRIE FIRES: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline FraserA November 2017 LibraryReads pick &New York Times Notable Book of 2017! “The sesquicentennial observance of the birth of the author of the celebrated Little House books (65 million copies sold in 45 languages) has been the catalyst for the publication of a spate of books, now including this magisterial biography, which surely must be called definitive. Richly documented…. But it is its marriage of biography and history—the latter providing such a rich context for the life—that is one of the great strengths of this indispensable book, an unforgettable American story.” — Booklist, starred review

THE WINE LOVER’S DAUGHTER: A Memoir by Anne FadimanA Library Journal Best Book of 2017 and a November 2017 Indie Next pick! With all her characteristic wit and feeling, celebrated essayist Fadiman examines her relationship with her father, Clifton Fadiman, a renowned literary critic, editor, and radio host whose greatest love was wine. “In this crisp, scintillating, amusing, and affecting memoir, Anne incisively and lovingly portrays her brilliant and vital father and brings into fresh focus the dynamic world of twentieth-century books and America’s discovery of wine.” — Booklist, starred review

THE VANITY FAIR DIARIES by Tina BrownAlso available in audio
Tina Brown kept delicious daily diaries throughout her eight spectacular years as editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair. Today they provide an incendiary portrait of the flash and dash and power brokering of the Excessive Eighties in New York and Hollywood. “High and low, perceptive and prescient (in 1987, she speculated that the American public won’t be able to resist the crassness of Donald Trump), this is a wildly entertaining, essential look at print journalism before the fall.” — Booklist, starred & signature review

The #9 pick is PRAIRIE FIRES: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser
“The sesquicentennial observance of the birth of the author of the celebrated Little House books (65 million copies sold in 45 languages) has been the catalyst for the publication of a spate of books, now including this magisterial biography, which surely must be called definitive. Richly documented…. But it is its marriage of biography and history—the latter providing such a rich context for the life—that is one of the great strengths of this indispensable book, an unforgettable American story.” — Booklist, starred review

Available from Metropolitan Books on November 21.

Rounding out the list at #10 is THE SHADOW DISTRICT by Arnaldur IndridasonTwo starred reviews!“The award-winning author of the ‘Inspector Erlendur’ series (INTO OBLIVION) continues his modus operandi of simultaneously covering a current and cold case in this new series set during the war years. The inspectors, past and present, are formidable characters, and the blend of police procedural with Icelandic folklore is intriguing. VERDICT While not as dark as lndridason’s previous works, this is a welcome addition from a master of the genre. ” — Library Journal, starred reviewreadmoreremove